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Tuesday, July 17, 2001

LOVE PARADE DE-RAILED: Hopefully the cancellation of the Love Parade may make Radio One think twice before cooking up any more of these half-baked mega events. The one saving grace of Newcastle pulling the glorified fete-with-disco would have been that the station would have stopped banging on about the event every three or four minutes (the final straw was the way they'd play the jingle over any dance track towards the end of last week), except, of course, now the "new arrangements" are being trumpted every opportunity - or rather, the desperate attempts to scrape egg from face. Interesting to hear Andy Parfitt on Today this morning, trying to spin the event inro a PR success, while simultaneously not pissing off the city council. The official Radio One controller's line came out, then as "There's still going to be lots happening, there's plenty of tickets still available, only don't come."
Of course, the days of the Roadshow are over, but maybe the expensive and embarrassing collapse of the Love Parade may refocus the station's efforts on providing entertainment for smaller crowds at places that tend to get missed off by the commercial events. The Roadshow at Eastbourne was the only thing that happened for non-pensionners in Eastbourne, ever, and as such the gift of Steve Wright to 80s teenagers was special. Love Parade smacks of an attempt to take on Creamfields and Homelands, and as such tastes bitter. Why not do a season of Saturday night specials in smaller towns throughout the summer? Probably spend the same budget, and wouldn't Fatboy Slim in Carlisle and Jon Carter in Worthing mean more to the audience, and be better payback for those towns' licence fee payers than a big, showy event in one location for one night?